Sarah DyeOne of my favorite things to collect is phone wallpapers. Wallpapers are my favorite way to decorate my phone. I love changing the wallpapers for my home and lock screens each month.
I often search for new wallpapers on Pinterest. Last year, I made updates on my Pinterest profile. During these updates, I made a new board just for all the wallpapers I had saved on my phone.
I have a variety of wallpapers on my Pinterest board, but my favorite ones are simple with a positive message on them. I find a lot of these wallpapers from The Everygirl website. They release new wallpapers each month.
==> Click here to find tech backgrounds on The Everygirl!
I like to use these wallpapers as my lock screen. When I need a confidence boost or motivation, I just turn on my phone and look at my lock screen. Over the past couple of years, I've thought about making my phone wallpapers.
I've seen many creators and online businesses make their wallpapers. This got me interested in learning how to create my wallpapers. However, I hesitated about creating one since I wasn't sure how to make one and I didn't have a design in mind to make.
When I was working on my post How to Use Visme to Help Design Projects Stand Out, I was super excited to see that Visme had phone wallpapers as one of the project types. Visme has a big selection of templates creators can use to help them build their very own wallpapers. In today's post, I'm using Visme to create my very own phone wallpaper. I'll walk you through the process I took to create my wallpaper using one of the Visme templates.
What is Visme?
Visme is an online design tool. They are best known as a tool for creating presentations and infographics, but you can use their platform to create anything you can imagine. They have a huge selection of things you can create.
Some of the items you can create on Visme include flyers, scatter plots, and social media graphics. You can also use Visme to publish your survey results visually. You can learn more about these content types on the Visme website.
==> Click here to learn how to use Visme to make graphs and charts!
==> Click here to learn how to use Visme to make flyers!
==> Click here to learn how to make scatter plots with Visme!
==> Click here to learn how to publish survey results with Visme!
One of my favorite things about Visme is the templates. While creators still have the option of just creating whatever they imagine, Visme offers a large selection of pre-made templates to help creators get started. If you would like to learn more about Visme templates, there is a page dedicated just to the templates they offer for all different types of content types. You can see sample templates for all different content items.
==> Click here to learn more about Visme's templates!
Want to learn more?
The best place to learn more about Visme is their website. Visme's website has lots of information about their tool and pricing. I visited the Visme blog on the website.
==> Click here to learn more about Visme!
==> Click here to read the Visme blog!
Their blog has lots of great design advice and tips creators can use to make amazing visual content. Last year, I published How to Use Visme to Help You Design Projects Stand Out. This post is a guide on how creators can get started with Visme.
You can see a tour of the Visme workspace and how to create a project. In this post, I use Visme to create the blog graphic for the post.
Preparing the Workspace
The first thing I'm going to do is create my project. In the Visme dashboard, I click the Create button to make a new project. Next, I pick the project I want to create.
Phone wallpapers are in web graphics. I click on the Web Graphics icon in the black navigation menu. When the sub-menu of all the web graphics projects opens up, I click on the phone wallpaper image.
This will open all the phone wallpaper templates Visme has available. I am going to use a template to create my phone wallpaper. The amount of templates you have available will depend on what kind of account you have.
I am using a premium account so I've got access to all the wallpaper templates Visme has created. After looking at all the templates, I decided to go with the template that says "Don't let ANYONE dull your sparkle". I've circled this wallpaper below so you can see what the template looks like before I start to customize it.
All I need to do now is double-click the template I want and Visme will open the template in the workspace. If I would like to change the template at any time, I can click the layout option on the left navigation bar in the workspace and pick a new template. Now that my template is in the workspace, I like to name my project so I can find it very easily on the Visme dashboard later.
I'm naming this project blog-phone-wallpaper which lets me know what the project is about and who the project is for. Now I'm ready to transform this template into my very own wallpaper.
Updating the Text
I'm going to start by changing all the text. I plan to keep this wallpaper very simple with just a little bit of text and graphics. The first thing I'm going to do is switch out the template text with the words loyal, brave, and true.
I double-click on each text item to get a blinking cursor so I can highlight and delete the text in the template. Then I just need to write the text I want. If there is any text I'm not planning on using, I'll just delete it from the wallpaper.
Once I've changed all the text, I can start playing around with the layout of each text item. I just click and drag them around the canvas to make sure everything is centered just right and in the right places. Next, it is time to start playing with the fonts and font size.
Before I start playing with the fonts, I am going to add a new font I can use for my wallpaper. Visme allows designers to add fonts to use on projects. In this project, I'm using a free version of Mulan's font I found online.
If you would like to use this font for any projects, you can download the file below. Just make sure after you download the file you extra the files so you can upload them to Visme. To add my font to Visme, I go back to the dashboard and click My Brand on the black sidebar menu.
==> Click here to get the Mulan font!
Inside My Brand, I go to the bottom of the page to the My Fonts section and click the Upload the Fonts button. This will open a window to let me search my computer and add the font I want. My font is in my downloads folder so I'll click my extracted font file and press ok.
Visme will add my font to the My Fonts section next to the Upload the Fonts button. Once the font is added to My Brand, I can use the preview window to change the text to see how it works with the new fonts I've added. You will want to look at the radio buttons at the bottom of the window.
These buttons set the fonts for the header, subheader, and body of my projects. If I no longer want to use this font, I can click the trash can icon in the corner of the window to delete it. Once my font is uploaded to Visme, I can now change the font on all the text in my wallpaper.
I head back to my project and can start updating all the text with my new font. When I double-click each text item, I just click on the font drop-down menu and will see my new font as one of the options. I just click the font name and the font of my text will change.
Changing the Graphics
The text is finished so it is time to add the graphics. I added two graphics to my wallpaper. One is a lotus flower while the other is a bow and arrow.
I found my graphics in the Visme graphics collection. Visme has a big library of graphics designers can use for their projects. Many of these graphics designers have available will depend on what kind of account you have.
My premium account gives me complete access to all the graphics in their libraries. In my project workspace, I click on the graphics I want to change. This will open the graphics icon from the left sidebar menu.
I can also click on the icon and pick the replace icon to access the menu. Next, I search for the icon I am looking for. Visme will then show me icons that match what I'm looking for.
I click the icon I want and Visme will change the icon on my canvas to the one I selected. Now that my graphics are on the screen, I can fix the size of each icon. I use the selectors in the corner of each graphic to change the size. I can also use the black box underneath the graphics submenu to change the width and height.
Adding Colors
It is time to start playing with color. This is where I'm going to change the colors for all the elements on my wallpaper. First thing I'm going to change the background.
I click on the background. This opens a sub-menu at the top of the workspace. I remove the template's background by clicking the trash can icon remove background.
The background Visme has on the wallpaper will be removed. The sub-menu will change to show only upload background or the color square. I'm going to pick and use a background color for my wallpaper.
In the background sub-menu, I click on the color square next to upload background. A window will open showing tabs for colors, presets, and more palettes. I am going to use a black background for my wallpaper.
I click on the black color square in the colors tab and the background on my canvas will turn black. Now it is time to change the text color. I double-click each of the text items to get a text sub-menu.
I click on the text color icon on the menu (it is an A with a color line underneath it) to open the color menu. I am going to make my text red on my wallpaper so I just click the red color square. The text color will change to red on the canvas.
Finally, it is time to start changing the color of the graphics. I click on each of the graphics to get the graphics submenu to open at the top of the workspace. Each graphic will have different color squares that designers can customize.
The arrow graphic only has one color square while the lotus graphic has three color squares. All I need to do for my graphics is click on each color square and pick the colors I want.
Conclusion
My wallpaper is now finished. After playing around with the position of the text and graphics, I just need to download my wallpaper as a jpg and see how it looks on my phone. I just click the download button in the upper right corner of the workspace and pick what option I want to download.
It took me several versions, but below is the final version of my phone wallpaper. What projects would you like to see me make with Visme? Are there any Visme features you'd like to see me talk about? Let me know what you'd like to see in the comments and I'll do my best to make it happen.
This post was originally published on January 12, 2020 on the blog BritishPandaChick Codes. I made minor changes to the original post for DEV.
